U.S. Census Bureau data released this week shows a rise in the number of American lacking health insurance. The Census Bureau data shows that 47 million people did not have coverage in 2006, up from 44.8 million in 2005. The number of children without healthcare coverage also rose to 8.7 million children up from 8 million.

The main reason for the increase is that employment-based coverage rates continue to fall. According to the survey, almost 59% of the uninsured worked during 2006. Adults aged 18 to 34 make up the largest portion of the uninsured.

I've watched beloved family and friends battle cancer and even with the best health insurance going, it was still an uphill battle. I can't imagine what it's like for those who don't have health insurance. Let's hope our country can figure this one out.

For a review of the coverage on this survey including the responses from the Bush administration, lawmakers and presidential candidates, please see the Kaiser Daily Health Report here.

As complied by Forbe's HealthDay, half of the top ten health news of 2006 feature issues of interest to cancer patients and the cancer community in regard to cancer research, treatment and prevention. The top health story involves the concern over cost of medical care among those with health insurance and the continually growing numbers of uninsured. A recent study shows that one in six, or 50 million people, are struggling to afford medical treatment as they now spend more than ten percent of their income on medical expenses.

After much controversy regarding ethics and morality, this year saw the approval of the first cervical cancer vaccine. The federal government recommends that girls as young as nine-years-old be given the vaccine. The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) re-approved the use of silicone breast implants. Although banned in 1992 because of concerns that silicone leakage might be linked to cancer, silicone implants were still offered to women undergoing breast reconstruction after breast cancer surgery. Supposedly the implants are now safe for all women. Some consumer advocacy groups still strongly disapprove of the FDA decision.

Another controversial issue being debated based on ethics and morality is stem cell research. According to Forbes, the majority of Americans are in favor of stem cell research and the promise it holds in the cure of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, and many other diseases.

Lastly, scandals swept throught the research community as fake research and researchers were exposed, as was conflict of interest over questionable financial ties in the research community.

Other health news stories that made Forbe's HealthDay top ten list included: Tainted-Food Scares Rattle Public; Drug-Eluting Stents May Stay; 'Morning-After' Pill Goes OTC; Antidepressants' Link to Suicide Debated; and More Progress Against Alzheimer's Disease. You can read the Forbe's top ten list in its entirety here.

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is introducing a new proposal to provide affordable, high quality, private health coverage for everyone regardless of where they work or live with the Healthy Americans Act.

"The Healthy Americans Act provides a guarantee -- health coverage for every American that is at least as good as Members of Congress receive and can never be taken away," Wyden explained. "The Act provides universal coverage for no more money than our country spends today. Better care, financial health and security, no increase in costs."

The plan outlines an approach to success by eliminating inefficiency, trips to the emergency room and incentives for prevention and wellness as the primary focus of health care. In addition, the plan provides tough cost containment and saves $1.48 trillion over ten years; and is fully paid for by spending the $2.2 trillion currently spent on health care in America.

"We're here because it is time to fix health care," Wyden added. "After decades of talk and study, it's time for action. Fixing health care is not as complicated as one might think."

Basically, every American will have access to the same opportunity and level of health care coverage that the members of Congress enjoy now. The full text of the 166-page Healthy Americans Act is available as a PDF document.

Minnesota tops state health rankings for the fourth straight year, according to the annual United Health Foundation report -- which also shows Americans are 0.3 percent healthier in 2006 than they were in 2005.

The United Health Foundation survey has been around for 17 years -- and for 11 of these years, Minnesota has been at the top of the healthy list.

Rankings are based on factors such as access to health care, incidence of preventable disease, smoking rates, child poverty rates, and motor vehicle deaths. Minnesota boasts a low rate of uninsured (8.4 percent), a low rate of child poverty (10 percent), and a low infant mortality rate (5.1 deaths per 1,000 live births).

The other states in the top five are Vermont, New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Connecticut. Louisiana was rated the least-healthy state and shares this spotlight with Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas.

A few states -- New Mexico, Idaho and West Virginia -- show declines in overall health. And others -- Illinois, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Kansas -- show the most improvement.

Two months ago, Wal-Mart launched its $4 dollar generic prescription drug program in Tampa, Florida. Two weeks ago, the program was expanded to include all Wal-Mart and Sam's Club pharmacies in 14 additional states -- Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas and Vermont.

314 generic prescription drugs, accounting for 25 percent of prescriptions it currently dispenses in its pharmacies nationwide, are available under the $4 dollar program.

For those with health insurance, the typical co-pay for the 314 generic drugs in Wal-Mart's $4 dollar generic prescription drug program cost between $5 dollars and $10 dollars. While the savings might not seem like much for people with health insurance, the co-payments can add up each month. For those on limited incomes, any savings is welcome relief. For the 46 million uninsured patients who live in one of the 15 states where this program is available, the savings can amount to much more, and may be one of the few times they have been offered a break when it comes to medical costs.

The generic drug list is available as a PDF document here.

Over three thousand cancer patients, survivors, friends and relatives went to Capital Hill to lobby Congress. The group want lawmakers to reauthorize a program that provides breast and cervical cancer screening for the uninsured. They lobbied for more money for cancer research and detection methods.

The National Cancer Institute's budget will be cut by forty million dollars by President Bush's proposed budget for 2007. This can really hurt research programs and early detection methods to help the uninsured. Treatment programs now only reach one in every five women that are eligible for it.

The two day event was sponsored by the American Cancer Society and its sister advocacy group, the Cancer Action Network. The event attracted over ten thousand people. They also had large exhibits available to visit that showed the work of state and local cancer activists.

Health care coverage for working Americans is like a brittle tree in a hard wind -- and the larger limbs are beginning to snap. Between the years 2000 to 2005, 6.8 million more people became uninsured according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau's Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division. Current data estimates 46.6 million people are without health insurance coverage. As employer-based health insurance continues to fade, government programs are taking up the slack -- up to a point. But given the lack of funding, there is only so much that can be offered.

In a statement issued by the Center for American Progress, "These problems did not just happen: they resulted from flawed economic and health policies which force Americans to work more for less. When it returns after Labor Day, this Congress should act to mitigate these problems by passing a straightforward minimum wage increase and extend health funding for programs like the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Moreover, policy makers should recognize the need for major change, such as providing affordable health care to all Americans and taking action to address growing income inequality."

Some are calling for a government-based universal health care system that guarantees health care coverage for all Americans. Others are suggesting a mix of private and public health care coverage. What ever the solution, there certainly needs to be one.

We can start with a shift in perspective and change in expectation. If you are working full-time for a company, presumably your efforts are helping that company make a profit. Health insurance coverage should not be viewed as a luxury benefit, nor should the largest burden of health insurance premiums be shouldered by the employee whose earnings just meet living expenses. Yet, this is happening every day in this country. The hard wind continues to batter the brittle tree.

Personally, I am not sold on a government-run, government-backed universal health plan simply because I have covered too many horror stories about rationed care in other industrialized countries. It seems a combination of programs might be the solution but the government and our elected officials certainly need to be held accountable for implementing programs that insure all Americans.

American Public Health Association Georges Benjamin is quoted by United Press International as saying, ""This is the worst news we've had all year. Our nation is not secure if we're not healthy."

Roy Thayers has experienced death up close, as he was caregiver for his first wife as she battled cancer -- he knows what it is like to watch someone fight for their life -- and he was there when she lost her life to cancer.

Thayers, who at the age of 77 lives alone, was recently told by his doctors that he was at risk for a fatal heart attack and might lose his life if he didn't undergo heart surgery to unblock the heart valves immediately.

The problem of avoiding death and living longer became a matter of time and money. When the NHS put Thayers on a nine-month waiting list for heart surgery, he worried he might not have that long to wait -- considering the urgency with which the doctors had impressed upon him concerning the imminent threat of a fatal heart attack without surgery. He was told he could have the surgery immediately if he paid for it himself.

In USA Today, Prices soar for cancer drugs, are some disturbingly stunning and eye-opening facts regarding the current cost of cancer drugs and an examination of where the costs might be headed. For example, Avastin, a newer drug used to treat colorectal cancer, costs about $50,000 dollars a year in treatment. That price is expected to go to $100,000 dollars a year if Avastin is approved to treat breast and lung cancers. It would be an understatement to say cancer patients and insurance companies are concerned. It's an uneasy feeling.

Some cancer drugs can cost $10,000 dollars a month for a single drug. The average monthly cost for a prescription cancer drug is estimated at $1,600 dollars. Without insurance, few could afford to buy life saving drugs and the consumer has to be sitting precariously perched at the mercy of insurance companies to keep funding the medicine. I think it would be safe to say that any cancer patient among the 45 million uninsured Americans is going without much-needed  medications if they have to come up with the money to buy the drugs. At these prices it is not possible.

"These costs are out of control," says Fran Visco, president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition, which is planning a conference focused on drug costs in the fall. "We can't allow it to continue." Who is going to stop the drug companies from charging what they want?

"It's really exploiting the desperation of people with a life-threatening illness," says Marcia Angell, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.

I just posted about quacks who exploit the desperation of cancer patients. While I do not equate drug companies with that jailed quack specifically, there seem to be more bad guys than the obvious scoundrels who prey on vulnerability. I don't have the answers but I am pessimistic about how this turns out for the cancer patient. I have yet to see anything in our society fall in price. I don't begrudge a business of profit -- but this is starting to look like a free-for-all and forget who might be hurt along the way.  What do you think?

According to Atlanta's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Dr. Susan Sabatino -- based on a study -- there are an estimated 660,000 uninsured cancer survivors in the US.

Because of the lack of medical insurance, or financial ability, two-thirds of uninsured cancer survivors younger than 65 delay seeking medical attention or skip buying needed prescriptions. The reason the study focused on people younger than 65 is because they do not qualify for Medicare health coverage.

Sabatino and her team share that they found almost 43 percent of cancer survivors with no health coverage said they had failed to get necessary prescription medicines due to cost concerns. In what can seem a normal life, your whole world collapses when you get a diagnose of cancer -- I cannot fathom the additional inner terror that someone diagnosed with cancer must face if they do not have health insurance or realize they cannot financially afford treatment or long-term aftercare.

According to the results of a new study, money cannot buy happiness and won't relieve stress. The more money you have the more stressed you are and the less time you spend enjoying yourself. That's what Princeton University economist Alan B. Krueger and psychologist and Daniel Kahneman, who developed a tool to measure the quality of daily life known as the Day Reconstruction Method, or DRM, which creates an enjoyment scale by requiring people to record the previous day's activities and describe their feelings about the experiences, report regarding the link to happiness and affluence.

Those who earned less than $20,000 a year spent far less time in a bad mood, and far more time involved in leisure activity, then those that made over $100,000. And the voice inside my head shouted, wait a minute! Who were the researchers talking to? If you are one of the 45 million working poor who cannot afford health insurance, how stress-free are you? If you get sick, and cannot afford the treatments you know are out there and available, but you don't have the money to pay for the treatments, how stress-free, happy and content can you possibly be? How much of your free time will you spend in leisure activity when all you can think of is not being able to get well, or a loved one suffering needlessly because good medical treatment cannot be financially afforded and their health is deteriorating as a result? Just a few quick questions that came to mind when I read the news of the study.

The Lesbian Community Cancer Project (LCCP) in Chicago has partnered with Howard Brown Health Center to ensure that everyone in the LGBT community has access to free or sliding scale health services. Howard Brown offers free clinical breast exams, mammograms, and pap smears to all low-income, uninsured women and is one of twenty community health centers in Illinois that participates in an early screening program for breast and cervical cancer.

The Gildas Club in Chicago is now in collaboration with the Lesbian Community Cancer Project and a support group just for the LGBT community. Membership and participation in all activities is free and begins by calling (312) 464-9900. The LGBT Wellness Group and the LGBT Family and Friends Group meets every Thursday night from 6:00pm to 7:30pm at Gilda's Club Chicago located at 537 N. Wells Street.

Few would disagree that the health care system in this country is breaking down. If you are one of the 45 million without health insurance you already know how difficult it is to get health care, and if you have medical insurance you continue to watch as your insurance premiums and deductibles go up year after year. Medicine has become more about money and less about patient care. We are told we spend more because we have the best health care system in the world.

But as Maggie Mahar points out in her new book, Money-Driven Medicine: The Real Reason Health Care Costs So Much, "We spend twice as much as Japan on health care -- yet few would argue that our health care system is twice as good." Mahar, a seasoned financial journalist, takes an in depth look at what she calls America's complicated and increasingly dysfunctional health care system, and what she finds is disturbing. Frankly, from a patient's perspective, it's reprehensible.

Doctors aren't allowed to function as doctors in putting a patient's needs first -- no -- medicine is business and corporations decide on a patient's treatment. To put it bluntly, medicine is a market-driven $2 trillion industry rife with competition. To cite just one example of what is taking place, and to illustrate how medicine truly sees itself  -- Milwaukee hospitals spent more in one year on advertising than fast food business did. Reviewers are calling Mahar's book a thoroughly researched and carefully reasoned study. I call it gutsy because she takes no prisoners and she isn't keeping any secrets. Until the day comes when doctors are allowed to practice medicine once again, with the priority on the patient and not corporate profit, the wheels on this buggy are going to keep falling off one by one until the axle completely splits in two. A must read for anyone who wants to understand how the system works and what motivates the players. The patients aren't even in the game. And that is what is truly appalling. 

USA Today features a story, Cancer makes life harder in the Big Easy, about the fact that life isn't getting any easier for cancer patients in the long-term aftermath of Hurricane Katrina's destruction of their soulful and spirited New Orleans. While some of the residents have returned to a place that is more than just a place, cancer patients still must leave the area to find cancer treatment. Before Hurricane Katrina, cancer treatment services were often a few miles away -- now the same treatment is sometimes hundreds of miles away. Charity Hospital, which treated many of the city's poor and uninsured, has been shut down since the storm. The same residents who could not leave right before the hurricane hit because they had no transportation, are now faced with the challenge of how to get to cancer treatment that can be miles away -- with no transportation.

Donna Williams, director of the Louisiana Cancer Control Program, and her staff, have been asking doctors for the names and addresses of cancer patients, then going to the last place they lived. If no one is there, they leave a sign tacked to the front letting the person with cancer know there are people out trying to find them -- to help them. "We put signs on whatever was left of their homes, on piles of rubble sometimes, hoping people would come back," Williams says. "If they didn't come back, hopefully a friend or neighbor would see it." Williams worries about the cancer patients she can't find. Williams, and the others like her, are the best of who we are as a people -- and sometimes better than some of us ever get a chance to be. They are the angels in our midst.

Kim Stubblefield, former high school cheerleader who worked nearly two decades at Union Hospital filing medical records, had it all. Marriage, family, work and her health. She is now unemployed, uninsured and essentially homeless. What happened? First a divorce, and then a throat cancer diagnosis. She lost her job, which led to her losing her health insurance. She has seizures, and a mild stroke has left her slightly paralyzed in her left arm and leg. In the news story The Southern Illinoisan has featured about her, by her own admission, is a person who has run out of options and is quickly running out of hope. In a series of bureaucratic rejections few of us would understand, Social Security disability won't help her, the Department of Public Aid won't help her, and she has been told she doesn't qualify for Medicaid.

"I’ve always worked, always contributed to what I would call the system," Stubblefield said. "But, I don’t understand how I can just keep getting turned down and keep getting turned down over and over again. All I’m trying to do is stay alive, so it goes far beyond frustrating. I just don’t understand how the system works." If this were an isolated incident, it would be disturbing enough to shame us as a nation, but this is happening to people all over the country. There are 45 million uninsured people in this country.

Jim Muir, columnist for The Southern Illinoisan, writes in an Op-Ed piece, We've failed our moral test, "On the state level we can spend $9 million to elect an Illinois Supreme Court justice and pay do-nothing, double-dipping politicians a six-figure retirement, but a dying woman can't get medical help. On a national level we can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a bridge in Alaska that 50 people per day use and a zillion dollars on a war in Iraq - but a cancer-stricken woman can't afford to go to the doctor. I don't care what your political party affiliation is -- there is something tragically wrong with that picture." Indeed.